Immigrant families also have twice as many children as their Russian counterparts.

Russian Jews who immigrated to Israel in the early 1990s can expect to live eight years longer than those who stayed behind, according to a study released on Wednesday.

Jews in Russia have historically outlived their non-Jewish counterparts - but their life expectancy remained consistently lower in the West: In 1989 it was 56.8 for a Jewish man and 60.1 for a Jewish woman.

Yet Jews who immigrated to Israel in the late 1980s and early 1990s went on to live an extra seven to eight years on average, the study showed.

And although immigrants still tend to die earlier than natives Israelis, the gap is closing, said Vladimir?Ze'ev Chanin, the author of the report.

"The immigrant's life expectancy is still lower than the average Israeli," Chanin said. "But it is averaging out with the local life expectancy at a faster pace than their wages."

Average immigrant salaries were still about 30 percent lower than those of workers born in Israel, Chanin added.

Immigrant families also have more than twice as many children than Jews in Russia, the report revealed. Russian immigrants averaged 2.1 children per family in Israel, while their Jewish counterparts in Russia averaged just one.

Chanin's findings are to be discussed during the annual Herzliya conference on Wednesday. The theme of this year's convention is the immigration to Israel of over a million Russians, which led to widespread changes in Israeli society and institutions.

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